


The Power Of Words

by AllyinthekeyofX



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Episode: s10e04 Home Again, F/M, Friendship, Hurt, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 06:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6943936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllyinthekeyofX/pseuds/AllyinthekeyofX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Margaret Scully was wearing a pendant set with a quarter on the day she died.  And this is my reasoning behind its existence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Power Of Words

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been thinking about that quarter a lot and have come up with a few scenarios and reasons for its existence. This is my favourite. Hope you like it. I am UK based so please forgive any inaccuracies. It’s only make believe after all.

J Edgar Hoover building.

9:07am

Scully is late. Not unusual for her at the moment and certainly, given recent events, both expected and forgivable. She tries to hide it from me but even now – especially now – I can read her like a book. Which now that I think of it, given what I’ve been trying to tell her for the past ten days, it’s an interesting choice of words.

We buried her Mom last Friday. Just three short days ago we both said goodbye to a woman who had been a guiding light in both our lives. The service was short, full of raw emotion and I watched silently as Scully fought to hold on to some vestige of composure. She stood at the front of course; alongside her closest family. 

Her brother Bill - Or Ahab the second as I like to think of him - The patriarch of the Scully clan. Ramrod straight, rigid in his control of the situation. Not once did I see him extend a comforting word or touch to his remaining sister. Charles, the elusive other brother who I have heard only as a disembodied voice through Scully’s phone, did not attend. The family rift in evidence even on that most sombre of occasions. I’ve asked Scully before about the estrangement of her youngest sibling but she claims not to know. Only that her Father disapproved of his life choices.

I found myself musing as the service continued, as to what the reasons might be but could only come up with the fact he might be gay. I didn’t know Scully’s Father although he continues to hover over her, as controlling now as though he were still here. Scully loved him, of that I have no doubt. But I also know how much she tortures herself still, that he would be in some way disappointed in her. For what she has done in the past and also what she may do in the future. And as far as I can tell, Scully has always been a pretty dutiful daughter. To find Scully lacking in any aspect of her character is something I can’t quite comprehend, so I can only imagine how Ole Ahab would have reacted if Charlie had shown up one evening with a Robert rather than a Roberta in tow. Of course I was probably completely off beam, but my musings gave me an escape from the vice that seemed to have taken residence in my chest cavity ever since I stood and watched Margaret Scully take her last breath.

She had spoken to me, just a brief few words as she woke up for the final time.

Referencing my son. Knowing I would understand. Her final gift to me before she left.

It also, for the most part, took my mind off Scully. If things had been different, I would probably have been up there with her. Standing in silent sympathy, maybe holding her hand or at least being a supportive presence in the midst of such sibling disinterest. And truly, I wish I’d had the balls to insist that she needed me to be up there with her. But I hadn’t.

On entering the church I’d caught the look of disdain that crossed the stony, rigid features of Bill Jr as he glared at Scully with a look that plainly demanded she make some attempt to justify exactly why the fuck she had allowed me to come. The passing of time has in no way altered Bill’s opinion of me and of the chaos I brought with me to his ordered life still eats away at him. Forgiveness is not an option for this man and given how hard it has been to try to forgive myself, I can’t really blame him.

 

So the service went ahead and Scully did what she always does – she got through it as best she could. Stoical, serene and controlled. Other than the night in the hospital when she briefly lost herself and allowed me to comfort her, I have not seen her shed a tear for her Mother. It’s entirely possible that she hasn’t allowed herself to cry. My partner is the master of denial and can surround herself with walls of steel that are impenetrable to everyone around her. Impenetrable sometimes even to herself.

We didn’t attend the wake of course. Scully had said all she needed to say to those present and I knew without asking that I would be about as welcome as a Birthday cake at a Jehovah Witness meeting. My presence would undoubtedly have mixed in a detrimental way with the alcohol Bill Jr and his loathsome offspring would be knocking back and Scully knew that trouble would surely follow.

She didn’t want that. I didn’t want that. And most crucially, Maggie wouldn’t have wanted it either.

So we just left. Scully to her neat apartment and me to the chaotic house that was never chaotic until she downgraded it from a home to a bachelor pad. Not that I blamed her for eventually leaving me. Hell, I practically pushed her out the door. But that doesn’t stop me from wishing she were still there. Wishing I’d done things differently.

I often wonder if, had Maggie Scully known how much we were struggling during that final heartbreaking year, whether she would have been able to somehow put our pieces back together. As our relationship disintegrated before our eyes and we lost sight of who we had become. Until there was nothing left to fight for. Neither one of us was exactly responsible. It just happened. Without us really noticing until it was finally too late. We got out before indifference turned to raw hatred.

We remained friends. Sort of.

We barely spoke for almost two years other than a weekly duty call from Scully. I couldn’t ever bring myself to call her although God knows I picked up the phone and brought her number up a hundred times. A thousand times. But even after everything we’d shared, I still couldn’t admit to her how much I needed her.

‘Hey it’s me.....how are you Mulder?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You taking care of yourself?’

‘Scully I’m fine. Really’

Only I wasn’t fine. Or rather I was. Just as long as I was just drunk enough to temper the pain, but not so drunk that I ceased to function I was able to pretend everything was just peachy. And to my amazement I actually managed to fool her. I think, looking back, that she was as distracted as I was. Trying to find her place in a world where she suddenly found herself. She’d been alone before – we both had – but this was a new kind of loneliness. A loneliness we had forced upon ourselves.

And slowly, from the snippets she gave me during those precious phonecalls, it became obvious that her life was moving forwards. Mine on the other hand had ended the day she walked out of the door.

As she got stronger, I got weaker. And one drink turned to two, then three, then four. Some days I lost count. I was hanging on by a thread and still she didn’t notice. Or so I thought.

The calls continued. My denial continued. And with it, a slow, downward spiral in to the abyss.

Then one day - a particularly bad day actually where I was still drunk from the night before - an unexpected visitor arrived on my doorstep.

She took one look at me, at the stained clothes, five day beard and eyes like the proverbial piss holes and her mouth set in a determined line. The Scully women are nothing if not determined. Yet again, I had disappointed her. I saw it in the way her eyes widened then dropped to the ground. Scully’s eyes that I had gazed in to for a thousand lifetimes.

But those eyes didn’t belong to Scully. Not my Scully at any rate. That day, when I had reached just about as low as I could get, when I truly believed that I had nothing of any value to justify my sorry excuse for a life, Margaret Scully had decided to come-a-calling.

She never did manage to explain why she had felt the need to climb in to her car and drive out in to the Virginia countryside on a cold February day. To visit a man who, at best had been a problem the whole time she had known him and at worst, the instigator of enough collective heartbreak to last several lifetimes. But she had made the decision to come out there and I was so damned grateful that I never questioned it too much. I discovered many years later that Scully had mentioned that she was worried about me. But back them I had no idea. No idea that she knew somehow that, yet again, I needed saving. 

I won’t pretend it was easy. I’ve never been particularly adept at accepting help, much less even admitting that there was a need in the first place. But like her daughter, Maggie Scully is pretty hard to deflect. She swept in to my life that day and gave me something I’d never really had. Something I’d never expected to ever have. She took me under her wing and became the Mother I had always wished for. She gave me, in a very real way, a stability that had been lacking since Scully left.

She didn’t do much really, but to me, it became everything. She talked. She bullied. She cajoled. She listened. But not once did she judge.

We talked about Scully, how she was doing. Snippets of her life. I remember asking one day if she was seeing anyone. Why I asked that particular question, I will never know because I sure as hell didn’t need to hear that she was. But Maggie just smiled sadly.

‘She never will Fox. You know that.’

I’m still not sure whether those words made me happy or that my heart broke for her yet again. My Scully. Not mine anymore but seemingly unable to be with anyone else. It should have made me happy. It didn’t. That night I drank until I passed out.

In the beginning I had wondered if Maggie had come to try to reconcile us. But I very quickly nixed that idea. She was a smart woman. She knew that no one could save us from each other, but that maybe, just maybe, she could help save us from ourselves.

She made it out to Virginia once a week or so. Only the worst weather would keep her away – she was, after all, well in to her sixties at that point. But I was still selfish enough to be pissed off when she didn’t make it. Not at her of course. Just at the circumstances. Because slowly, slowly I was being pulled back from the brink. But the ledge I found myself on was narrow and infinitely unstable. One misstep would be all it took to send me toppling backwards once again.

But she rang me often and actually, it was easier to talk over the phone. I shared things with her that I hadn’t even shared with her daughter and to finally talk about some of the emotion I’d been bottling up, gave me at least some vestige of peace.

Occasionally though, after she had hung up the phone, the loneliness would envelop me like an impenetrable fog and I would reach once again for the only thing I knew would dull the pain. More often than not, waking up on the floor the next morning, with a thousand trumpets blasting out a crescendo in my head. Usually followed by me puking whatever beverage of choice had been on the menu the night before.

I wasn’t cured. Nowhere near.

And then one day, a bright spring day where we sat outside on the porch and listened to the sound of the countryside waking up from its winter slumber, she started telling me about a game she had started playing online. Kind of an interactive scrabble board where you could play your opponents remotely. I wasn’t really that interested. I always hated scrabble as a kid and really, it had never, until that moment, impinged on my adult consciousness in any way, shape or form.

But I listened to her extolling the virtues of this technological miracle out of a sense of duty more than anything else. Hell, she’d listened to me enough over the previous months.

‘Imagine Fox, I can have a game with someone all the way across the world, just as though they are sat right there with me...’

And somehow, I had found myself agreeing to set up an account and share some games with her. It seemed like such a small thing to do for her.

I know now, just how shrewd she was. The same quick mind I’d always admired in Scully, the ability to connect the dots, to empathise, to see cause and effect. Oh yeah, now I knew where it had come from.

So my focus shifted. It shifted away from the bottle and towards the computerised board that gave me a daily challenge. The challenge being of course, to win the game. But Maggie was already a master. And she was a formidable opponent.

By the time I finally managed to edge ahead with the rolling point score – Ironically the word I won with was ‘Obfuscate’ – I hadn’t had a drink in almost 3 months. 

I won’t say it was all roses and sunshine because it wasn’t. I had some very very dark days. I think I always will. But I managed to keep afloat. Just.

Spring turned in to summer and her visits became less. She still called often and we still engaged in our tussles over the scrabble board, but our relationship had subtly shifted. Less of a parent and more as a friend. But I owed her. I think in many ways she had saved my life.

 

I began to emerge, with a renewed vigour and set about restoring order to both my house and my life. Clearing and organising a room at a time. And one day I found a small stash of beer. Shoved in to a cupboard and forgotten about. I didn’t recognise the brand, couldn’t recall buying it, although back when Scully first left, most everything I did was done in a state of semi consciousness. The ten bottles had a five cent return deposit on each of them......if I returned them to New York that is. 

230 miles. An 8 hour round trip if I were lucky. But as Scully could tell you, I’m nothing if not impulsive and when I get an idea....well I just have to run with it.

So I tipped the contents of the bottles down the sink, rinsed them as per the instructions on the bottle bill label, arranged the rental of a car, fed the fish double rations in case I wasn’t back as soon as I hoped, and off I went.

It was an easy drive, the first time I had driven any distance in the better part of a year. And it felt good. So good to be finally moving again. Two days later I was on my way home. Mission accomplished.

I sat on my surprise for two long weeks. Maggie was out of town – visiting Bill Jr in San Diego. We usually skirted gracefully around the Bill issue and when she told me she was going, I simply wished her a good trip. I don’t think Bill would ever expect or appreciate my fond regards.

But finally she returned home. And a couple of days later, on a balmy summer’s day, she visited me for the last time. I’d made an effort for once – pulled a recipe for Long Island iced tea off of google – the non alcoholic version of course – and whilst it wasn’t exactly perfect, it was pretty damn good to drink whilst we once again sat in the well worn chairs that still grace my porch today. Not so long before it had been the younger version of Maggie Scully who had sat with me. But I’d finally managed to reconcile myself to the fact that, for now at least, Scully and I didn’t belong together.

Maggie had smiled when I handed her the box. It was beautifully wrapped. Not by me, but by the jeweller who made the pendant setting that would hold the battered quarter in place. I held my breath as she opened it, hoping that she might guess the significance of the date I’d had engraved on the back if not the quarter itself.

05/26 – June 26th – the day I beat her at that stupid word game. The day I decided that I might just have something left to give.

When I explained the relevance of the quarter itself, her eyes shone briefly with unshed tears and she curled the pendant tightly in her hand. 

Her voice, when it came, was a fierce whisper.

‘I will wear it always Fox. Thank you. I can’t tell you......’

I held up my hand. She didn’t need to say it. Because I knew already how much it meant to her. She had done this, not only for me, but for Scully. So that one day, we might be able to re-connect once more. And I loved her for it.

The visits stopped after that. An unspoken acknowledgement that I was ok. At least for the moment.

But every night at 6pm sharp, wherever I was, no matter what I was doing, I would pick up my smart phone and log on to play a few words with her. My way of affirming that I was still here. Still doing ok. Right up until the night before she died I played. I still have the active game open. But she will never make the next move. A game frozen in time, waiting patiently until eventually, it will probably miss a crucial upgrade and simply disappear. 

The thought makes me sad.

 

‘Mulder? You ok?’

I start slightly at the sound of Scully’s voice. I was so engrossed in thought that I hadn’t heard her enter the office. She is holding two cardboard cups in her hands. Vanilla latte for her, strong black Columbian roast for me. 

Worry is creasing her brow, her features still as fine and delicate as the day I first met her. If she’s grown older, I never see it. I smile to reassure her and reach out a hand to take the coffee from her.

‘Sit down here would you Scully? I need to tell you something’

‘Mulder?.....’ 

Her voice is questioning, but nonetheless she sits across from me, setting her own coffee down on the desk.

Instead of answering her, I reach in to my pocket and just for a second, let my fingers curl around the smooth, round surface of the key fob within. A key fob made up of a single battered quarter. The brother to the one she wears around her neck. Silently I remove it from my pocket, placing it on the desk and slowly slide it towards her.

 

Epilogue

I arrive home at just before 6pm. We both decided to escape the office early for once. It’s been a strange sort of day. Scully listened to my story of the quarter in silence and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out if she was angry or not. But eventually, after the silence between us stretched thin and taught, her hand lightly touched the pendant that nestled against the hollow of her throat and she smiled that sweet soft smile that can render a man just about unconscious. 

‘I’m glad you did this Mulder’

She cried then. Finally, she cried and allowed me to kiss her tears away. I think I cried too. I can’t be sure.

I would have liked her to have come home with me. But we are finding each other again. Slowly re-connecting just as Maggie always knew we would. And even as I asked her, I knew it was too soon.

So I am here alone. But no longer lonely.

I’m contemplating what to have for dinner – I’m relatively self sufficient now and can cook a passable meal for myself – when my phone alerts me to a notification. I look at the glowing screen.

“DanaScMD has challenged you to a game of words with friends. Would you like to accept?”

End


End file.
